Microsoft brought the latest Halo title to San Diego Comic-Con last week, and after a nearly two hour wait we got our hands on Halo: ODST for ten minutes. Did attendees think the wait was worth it? Telling by the constant crowds around Microsoft’s booth, it’s hard to say no.

The fans lined up for Halo, and Halo they got. ODST isn’t a massive departure from the series. We did preview a new feature, however, which was the Firefight mode. FPS players, however, will find it familiar. While this trendy new mode still goes by a variety of names, like Horde (Gears of War 2), Survival (Left 4 Dead) or Nazi Zombies (Call of Duty: World at War), Halo‘s take on the mode is essentially the same as the others. You and your teammates take on endless waves of baddies on a variety of purpose-built arenas until you’re overrun and die, then you check your score and try again. More Covenant drop in with each round of “reinforcements,” and at higher levels the Halo series’s infamous Skulls start activating, granting the baddies new abilities like better dodging. Still, for all of Bungie’s talk about the mode being different from the aforementioned modes in other games, it just isn’t.

Bungie is on the ball, however, with the claim that players feel weaker and smaller as an ODST compared to the towering Master Chief. By removing recharging shields and shortening player height, the House of Halo really has created a compelling sensation of relative weakness. Reinforcing that are subtle cues that cast the player’s Orbital Drop Shock Trooper as a much smaller cog in a much bigger machine. Players start Firefight games with a new standard-issue silenced SMG and a redesigned pistol, hinting that the player is part of a team that relies on tactical training instead of Spartan super-soldier machinery and strength. New radio chatter (characters automatically shout “Reloading!” among one another and confirm Covenant kills) adds further to the effect. This is still Halo, but to a certain degree it’s presented as “Halo meets Rainbow Six” and it works.

Those details aside, the act of playing the game isn’t much changed from Halo 3, and fans of that game will instantly feel at home here. The only change to control that’s been made is that the X button (which was used to deploy items) now toggles new night vision goggles. Of the two levels shown at the Con, only one necessitated the goggles, and even then a seasoned player (which accurately describes everyone packed in the line) wouldn’t need them.

Another unchanged aspect is ODST‘s graphics. It’s the usual Halo 3 visuals. There may be subtle visual improvements, but that may be attributed to the fantastic 1080p displays Microsoft employed. One definite improvement was a thin yellow outline for guns laying on the ground. On the darker, night vision goggle-friendly Firefight map, the outlines were the only thing that set most weapons apart from the darkly-colored ground.

Unsurprisingly, the typically great audio of the Halo series carries over into this new standalone expansion. The usual great sound effects go along with the aforementioned tactical chatter, and there are short bits of Halo-esque, percussive orchestra music to signal when another wave of Covenant reinforcements arrives.

All in all, the Firefight mode unique to Halo: ODST won’t make any converts out of skeptics of the famous FPS series. But for the die-hard fans – and telling by the Comic-Con experience there are still plenty – the subtle details add up to a nicely timed freshening of the Xbox 360’s flagship shooter franchise.

Halo: ODST arrives exclusively on Xbox 360 on September 22, and will pack the full Halo 3 multiplayer game along with new maps and beta access to Bungie’s next game, Halo: Reach.

Reader Comments

regulas

The first Halo was fun, played it on my PC. Was going to buy the second until I read on the box I had to have Vista. It was a MS strong arm ploy to force gamers to buy Millennium II. I put box on the shelf and haven’t looked back. From what I hear the second Halo was not as good anyway.
This RPG looks good and could be fun, on the PC but MS can keep their crapbox 360 and their crapbox live subscription service.

Salty

I was super excited for this to come out when they said it was going to be a budget title expansion pack. I became slightly less excited when Bungie said it was going to be a full price title. I still preordered it, though, since for me Halo is one of the only games that I can go back to and enjoy. CoD gets old after about 6 months for me, Halo can always bring me back with the random stuff that can happen in every game.